CJSR

From the airwaves to the Internet

For over three decades, CJSR has been the home of alternative news and music on Edmonton’s radio dial. CJSR has worked passionately since its inception to keep on broadcasting, and is the proud, volunteer-run home of cultural and underground programming in Edmonton.

Broadcasting a wider signal

When the organization came to Kobot, they were looking to redesign an outdated and clunky website. CJSR then identified two goals it wanted to address: creating aesthetic and thematic connections between the station’s shows and attracting more support from the community in the form of volunteers and donations.

The Challenge Identifying the site’s true needs. Kobot had to unify many individual needs to make sure that the site served both the members of the organization, and their diverse audiences.

The Solution Gaining a broad perspective. We conducted in-depth research to create stronger connections between listeners and the station.

The Results Giving the organization a site that has helped it thrive. We helped drive audiences toward more valuable content for them to enjoy, as well as leading them to ways they could donate time or finances to help their station excel.

Creating cohesive goals

CJSR is built on passion—it is run primarily by volunteers and a small, dedicated staff. Each member of the team cares deeply about the organization and represents a distinct perspective and set of values. This is where Kobot’s research process truly shines through.

We believe that too many priorities becomes the same as no priorities; by focussing on too many things at once, it’s impossible to maintain the quality work we pride ourselves on. Through our research interviews with various organizational stakeholders, we were able to identify patterns and boil down CJSR’s needs to a few crystal clear goals. This paved the way for the new site’s success.

Signalling new connections

We tackled the first goal by building a new schedule and show listing that illuminated the connections between shows through a multi-step tagging taxonomy.

Because of its diversity, CJSR shows are often “appointment listening,” where the audience member tunes in for ‘their show’ at the same time every week. For station like CJSR this is a challenge because users don’t tend to tune in before, and then the radio is turned off immediately afterward. We used this new system to ensure that fans of one show would be made aware that they would find similar content in shows that occurred on other days or times.

Building strong support

To complete the second goal, we created content that walked readers through reasons CJSR needed the community’s support, and the benefits the community received from the existence of CJSR, then followed it with a strong call to action imploring readers to donate their time through volunteering, or their money. Then we made this content easily available from the site’s front page through highly visible callouts, banners and buttons.

CJSR’s website proves Kobot’s ability to develop strong content and connections between that content, and create websites that add value and develop deeper interaction between an organization and its audience.

Kobot won an Award of Distinction in the Not-For-Profit Website category at the 36th-annual ACE Awards for the development of CJSR’s website.